Lando Norris expresses shock at Lewis Hamilton-led team's deficit in the F1 Australian GP

Lando Norris has expressed shock at where Lewis Hamilton-led Ferrari was in Australia after the squad got off to an impressive start on Friday in the race weekend. The first race of the season saw the form guide swing wildly for the Italian team.

On Friday in FP1 and FP2, the Ferrari appeared to be a potent weapon in the hands of Charles Leclerc. The driver even topped the timesheets to end the first day of running. The second day was, however, slightly different, as all of a sudden the car was not in the right window. In qualifying, the gap between Lando Norris in pole position and Leclerc was around 6 tenths.

It was even worse for Lewis Hamilton, who was 8 tenths behind the benchmark. According to multiple reports, Ferrari being forced to lift the car by a few millimeters is what cost the team performance. Talking to the media in the press conference, Lando Norris was questioned about the relative performance of the cars, and the driver admitted that he was a bit surprised to see the Italian team this far down. He said:

"Definitely the gap we had in qualifying, I was a bit surprised by. Our goal was to be pole and to be quickest and we expected to kind of be there, but we expected Ferrari to be a good chunk quicker than they were. I think they ended up, what, seven, eight tenths off."

He added:

"They’re not seven, eight tenths off by any means. There’s not been one session, FP1, FP2, FP3, that even looks that far off. All of their race runs were a lot closer to us than everyone else. In fact, I think the Ferraris race pace on Friday was like even better than ours, almost. So we were a little bit surprised. I’m sure they seemed a bit shocked as well as to why they were so far off. I don’t know why."

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Lando Norris uses the Lewis Hamilton-led team's example to show how tricky things can be in F1

Lando Norris used the example of the drop-off in pace for Lewis Hamilton's team as the perfect case of how hard it is to nail everything in F1 at the moment. Even slight changes either way can put the cars in the wrong window and cause drastic performance swings.

Hamilton eventually ended up finishing the race in P10 after starting in P8. Talking about the tricky nature of the sport right now, Norris said:

“It just shows how difficult it is. It’s so easy for it to be going well, and so easy for it to just kind of turn upside down and not. Then you saw how quick Max [Verstappen] was at the end, and even at the beginning of the race, like Max was just as quick as us."

He added:

"But definitely in that period where you have to understand the tyres and know how much to push, you want a well-balanced car, in those drying out conditions, so the tyres kind of die away evenly, rather than more front or rear limited. That’s when we seem very, very strong, in that middle period of the race. But there’s also a good amount that me and Oscar have learned from each other in knowing how we have to drive the tyres, so I think that also helps, having a good teammate that we can learn from."

Lando Norris, on his part, had a perfect weekend where he started the race in pole position and won. The driver would be trying to extend the form from here and build on it in China.